Good popular music can follow any of a number of paths to achieving momentary success. Great popular music must navigate choppier waters. One of the essential disciplines for a great pop album is song placement. The artist and producer weave a complex, but in many ways predictable, emotional pattern. Song placement is key in this endeavor. Almost always, the great album peaks at song four. There is no way of explaining it. Whether it is ten songs or thirteen, whether pensive or exuberant, the key song is always positioned at number four. For the skeptical, the following apply: 1. Everybody Hurts; 2. Thirteen; 3. Veronica; 4. This Is Hell. Elvis Costello occupies two spots.

Rubber Soul and Pet Sounds notwithstanding, it holds true more often than not. Apparently, the same applies to sprawling documentary work.

The War’s Episode Three is that perfect tune. It isn’t necessarily the hit, but it is certainly the piece of work that will stand out thirty years from now, justifying the importance of the project. Like so many of those pieces of music, there isn’t a definitive explanation for why it is exceptional, especially in comparison to the other pieces comprising the whole, but almost everyone eventually accepts the supposition.

It isn’t hard to accomplish tension and emotional upheaval when your subject is World War II. Manipulating those elements into rising and falling action, therefore, is a thankless task. It is expected, despite the difficulty it entails.

Episode Three throws in the kitchen sink.

We begin with racial tension. There is a need for delicacy here. We all know, whether we choose to admit it or not, that the United States in the 1940’s was far from an egalitarian example. The War points out not only the segregation of the Jim Crow South, and the discrimination faced by African-Americans in both the military and civilian world, but also the continuing saga of Japanese-Americans (as a matter of proportion, notice we can say “Japanese” rather than “Asian” American) in the tumult of our battle against the Axis Powers. The delicacy required pertains to the apparent dichotomy of a country that played a major role in defeating fascism while simultaneously denying basic rights to its minority communities.

Much is made of American exceptionalism. It is hard to controvert, considering men like Daniel Inouye of Hawai’i. As the American military displays the gall to recruit in internment camps for the new 442nd Regimental Combat Team (a segregated, Japanese unit allowed to join—or exhibit treason, should they refuse—the fight in 1943) Inouye’s father tells him that “This country has been good to us… we owe a lot to this country… do not dishonor this country.” Where else can a country expect loyalty from those who find themselves incessantly under the boot of their betters? As The War depicts over and over again, this loyalty is obviously in earnest. Without the efforts of the segregated regiments, it would have been difficult at best to prevail. Somehow, America earned their trust more than its majority population.

If the viewer expected to be spared the importance of collective sacrifice, think again. As we segue from those brave men of Senegambian and Japanese, along with Anglo, German and Italian, etc., extraction, another bit of oblique history is accented. In Episode Two it is made quite clear that, rather than strategy or expertise, sheer overproduction was key to victory. Episode Three illustrates another key to victory: recycling. The question is obvious. When was the last time we were asked to save our kitchen fats? Take one less spoon of sugar? Hell, nowadays it would cause a rebellion if we spared a few thousand Congolese lives to do without the same amount of Play Stations. Point taken.

Issues of mutual effort and ethnic inequality eventually give way to those personal stories Burns hinges the entire series upon. While we’re throwing in the kitchen sink… well, let us say that Babe Ciarlo’s correspondence reaches climax.

More and more, The War reminds us of The Old Testament. While absorbing it, we observe that much of it is scattered, irritating and absurd. And, in some inexplicable way, absolutely necessary for all projects of its kind to follow.

If Herodotus is history’s father, we might nominate Celine his counterpart in terms of twentieth century war analysis. As he recounts his experiences with the World Wars, as a soldier, citizen and sometime refugee, the primary component… aside from war’s mindlessness, brutality and exacerbating class divide… of his evaluation comes down to a sense of randomness.

As Ken Burns’ The War continues, the viewer is assailed with what seems to be a designed randomness.

The concept, for starters, seems to employ the dart-to-map strategy. The War is told as a series of chapters in municipal biographies. The four towns (Waterbury, Connecticut; Sacramento, California; Luverne, Minnesota; Mobile, Alabama) are representative of our distinct geographic and cultural areas. That said, the selection of four communities in the United States to represent our nation at war tends to improvise on that theme of arbitrariness.

Earlier, this reviewer referred to the “Bix Beiderbecke moment” one can expect in a Ken Burns documentary. In The War, Episode Two, that seems to come in the shape of an intense focus on the Weinzheimer family in Sacramento and The Philippines while the Battle of Midway receives a mention almost in passing.

The War’s focus is not on historians or tacticians, though. Through the stories of “common” individuals, Burns endeavors to get at the gestalt. He is to be commended for a unique approach, eschewing “all things Nazi” or the time-tested technique of men with scrambled egg hats poring over charts and troop movements. This method, while novel, does come with problems.

The Beiderbecke phenomenon is the result of those problems. It is evident that, while looking at these average Americans, the sense of perspective is skewed. After all, Eisenhower is more important than most.

But this is nitpicking. Episode Two is a striking two hours of film. From the North African front to the European air engagements to Mobile shipyards, the totality of World War II is portrayed with clarity. Just as this tightrope act appears in peril of falling off into a haphazard telling, the film manages to hit just the right transition. It is quite remarkable. When it seems that an entire year of trench and air warfare, rations, and, for the most unlucky, internment, is progressing along just a bit too fast, a wonderful monologue on what the infantryman faced on a constant basis rights the ship. When one questions the precision of a narrative that pits the under trained but increasingly well-equipped Americans against the sophisticated and professional Axis forces, he soon finds himself blushing at the incisive descriptions of military strategy and collective sacrifice on the home front. If the Japanese look barbaric in their treatment of prisoners, Executive Order 9066 looks us right in the eye. In case you think the portrayal of our loyal public is coming too close to a back patting for your comfort, we learn about the prevalence of black market purchases during the time of rationing. Et cetera. Et cetera.

It would be unwise to continue without mentioning these individuals that represent our wartime society. There is a need to entertain, and in this regard the pacing is spot-on. In the first episode, Katharine Phillips steals the show. Who can resist a southern belle in full flower? In the following episode, the letters of Babe Ciarlo are compelling. Future episodes will develop other interview subjects to a crescendo.

The approach is imprecise but engaging. Again, we find ourselves in an amusing predicament. At this point, what is left to tell about WWII? Still, The War concludes its second night with a cliffhanger. Can Burns and Co. hang on without spiraling into soap opera? So far, the answer has to be in the affirmative.